The Rutherford County Budget and Finance Committee held a public comment hearing on Tuesday night for residents to weigh in before the county commission votes on the mayor’s 16.17 percent property tax rate increase.
The proposed rate increase, if adopted, would mark the largest property tax rate hike the county has seen in decades to accommodate and keep up with the rising expenses caused by the exponential growth the county is experiencing.
The first resident to speak during the public comment period, Melanie Adams O’Neill, spoke in opposition to the rate hike, saying, “Last spring, many of the elected officials in this room campaigned for election on a platform of common sense, being fiscally conservative, and wanted limited government. Less than a year later, these same people are now in office and tonight are proposing the largest County property tax in decades.”
She continued, “Many of these officials claim to be conservative Republicans – some even tea party members – but this historically large tax increase sounds like something right out of a liberal playbook of California and Washington. If you ran as a fiscal conservative, please remember the promises that you made to the citizens of this County.”
A local farmer named Charlotte also spoke in opposition to the rate hike during the meeting, saying that if the commission adopts the proposed tax rate hike “there won’t be many [local farmers] left in Rutherford County.”
“There has to be a better way to share the cost of growth than the 16 percent property tax,” she added.
Another local resident who has lived in Rutherford County for over 40 years called the proposed rate hike “unrealistic.”
While concluding the meeting, District 4 Commissioner Robert Peay, who chairs the budget committee, said, “We all pay these taxes, our family pays these taxes. It hurts all of us to have to do something like this, but when you’re in this position, you may not have voted for half the things that we’re financing, but our job here is to figure out how to pay for that and do that in the best and most efficient way.”
A final vote on the proposed rate hike in Rutherford County will come before the end of the month.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network.
